The present invention relates to a recycling method for an electric appliance including a printed circuit board in which the use history can be determined for an object such as a printed circuit board on which an LSI and LSI module to be used in the electric appliance are mounted, a remaining life estimation method which can estimate the a remaining life of each of the LSI and LSI module mounted on the printed circuit board and which can decide whether or not to recycle them, and a system thereof.
For an electric appliance which fails partially and cannot be used, such appliances are conventionally discarded. However, by the "(Amended) Disposal of Waste Law" in July in 1992, social pressure has arisen to promote recycling of a reusable article for preserving both the natural environment and resource conservation.
Therefore, it is necessary to decide whether or not to reuse an electric appliance or a printed circuit board having a mounted LSI and LSI module forming part of the electric appliance, which have been collected for disposal of waste by a manufacturer from a user or which have been requested to be repaired by a manufacturer due to a failure. However, to decide whether or not to reuse, it is necessary to know an elapsed use time of the item including the use environment and frequency of use thereof, and to estimate a remaining life of each electric appliance or printed circuit board having a mounted LSI and LSI module forming part of the electric appliance. However, in a prior art (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open 60-206082), these points are not taken into account. In the above prior art, to make the consistency of a test program perfect, a printed circuit board was structured so as to incorporate a storage element such as a ROM in the printed circuit board, so as to store the history information of the printed circuit board therein. As the aforementioned history data, (1) the model number indicating the kind of printed circuit board boy, a small change thereof, and an improved number, (2) the test program number indicating the kind of test program, (3) test result data, (4) the date of failure, failure status, and repair history of a component to be replaced, and (5) the production number of a unit to be assembled and use history such as used environment (no detailed description is given to this use history) are described.